Brooks on Beer: Blondes, Brunettes & Redheads

Jay R. Brooks

For the Bay Area News Group

Posted:
07/04/2012 12:01:00 PM PDT

The color of beer curiously mirrors that of human locks. Why that should be, I have no idea, but I was struck by this fact after I received one of the strangest news releases to ever cross my desk. (More about that in a minute.)

From the lightest towhead to the most raven-haired beauty, the entire color spectrum of beer is visible atop people's heads. Just like your noggin, there's no naturally occurring green, blue or purple.

Beer's color comes primarily from the grain that's used to brew it. Barley is the most common brewing grain, although wheat, rye and a few others also are used. Once the barley is harvested, it's soaked in water until it begins to sprout, and its growth eventually is halted with heat. Grain is kilned to various degrees, with lighter temperatures producing lightly colored malt. Sometimes the grain is roasted to create very dark, almost black malts. The combination of malts creates a range of aromas, flavors and color.

In the 19th century, Joseph Lovibond was the first to develop a method of determining specific beer colors. A brew's color was assigned a number, determined by holding a color plate up to the beer and finding the best match. The system became known as the Lovibond scale; despite its somewhat subjective methodology, it worked pretty well and still is used today.

A more scientific and objective method was later developed. The SRM, or Standard Reference Method, uses a spectrophotometer to measure the intensity of light, rather than the hue or tint, then assigns a number from 1 to 40. The range starts with straw (the lightest at 2-3 SRM), followed by yellow, gold, amber, copper, brown and black, the darkest at more than 40 SRM.

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Each beer style has a distinctive SRM range that brewers aim for when making their beer. That's why you can be reasonably sure your stout will be black (SRM 40) and your pilsner golden (SRM 6-8),, though there is wiggle room in the midrange.

One brewery is taking the idea of beer and hair color one step farther. Rogue Ales, headquartered in Newport, Ore., is making a very unusual use of that connection. Longtime brewmaster John Maier has sported a long beard most of his life; in fact, he hasn't shaved it since 1978. For curiosity's sake, and partly as a joke -- at least initially -- Rogue staffers snipped a few of Maier's beard strands and sent them to White Labs, a yeast bank and laboratory in San Diego, for testing. To everybody's surprise, the lab discovered a viable new yeast strain in Maier's beard that was entirely different from Rogue's house yeast.

"We were shocked and thrilled with this remarkable discovery," White Lab president Chris White says. While it's not uncommon to find wild yeast -- they often go into fields and vineyards looking for it -- it is unusual to find such a clean, usable strain.

There are many types of yeast, and not all of them can be used to brew beer successfully; after testing, the lab found this was. Talk about your locavore angle. Of course, Maier has been around beer, hops and malt his whole life, so his beard is, in essence, a product of his environment.

Rogue currently grows some of its own hops as well as its own barley, so president Brett Joyce says the company﻿ was excited to discover it could grow its own proprietary yeast, too. The company is brewing test batches now to see which beer style works best with the new yeast, and it plans to have the new beard beer for sale in early 2013.

One of Rogue's older beers is a barley wine known as Old Crustacean, so the new beer will be called -- with a wink and a nod -- New Crustacean.

Beer fest

Having lost my mother to breast cancer, I've always been very supportive of the annual Breastfest put on by Marin Brewing Co. It used to be held at the brewery, but the festival outgrew the space and moved to the more spacious Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The event will be 3-7 p.m. July 14, and it marks the 12th time brewers have joined together to support the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic. Tickets are $45 in advance, $55 at the door. For details, go to http://thebreastfest.org.